


What Dreams May Come

by phoenike



Series: The Leonardo Effect [1]
Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-07
Updated: 2013-03-07
Packaged: 2017-12-04 14:06:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/711576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenike/pseuds/phoenike
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Young Ezio has nightmares. A flashback written while working on <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/688553">The Leonardo Effect</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Dreams May Come

**Author's Note:**

> The game suggests that Ezio didn't come back to Florence from Monteriggioni or meet Leonardo again until shortly before killing Francesco de' Pazzi. I changed this a bit.
> 
> No spoilers for the main story. Beta'd by [Elenilote](http://archiveofourown.org/users/elenilote/pseuds/elenilote), thank you my dear!

**Repubblica Fiorentina 1477**

The crowd seething on the Piazza is as impossible to cross as the flooding Arno.

Then again, it’s not every day three noblemen lose their lives. More people than ever have gathered in the shadow of the great facade of the Palazzo, rich merchants and robed patricians bumping elbows with lawyers, craftsmen, servants, whores and flea-ridden beggars. Otherwise it’s just like any other hanging day in lovely Firenze. Pretty girls going around with pie trays, ragged boys hawking rotten eggs and picking the pockets of their unsuspecting customers. People laughing, gossiping, flirting, stinking, cursing the unseasonably warm weather. Dogs barking and fighting for scraps.

“Father! Federico! Petruccio!” Ezio struggles to get through. But every time he sees the gallows, it has become more distant, instead of closer. And no one hears his cries through the din. Least of all the men who stand on display for the spectacle of the day.

Then the rabble explodes with frenzied screams and whistles as the Gonfaloniere raises his hand and spouts lies and slander. _“Crepate, traditori!”_ Stones and filth fly. _“Abominati!” “Morite!”_

“No, they’re innocent!”

But no one listens; all the people care about is their entertainment.

Once again Ezio can only watch in horror as the hangman pulls the lever and the trapdoors fall. The mob around him bursts out in cheers. He screams, swearing death and vengeance.

Finally he has the attention of those who recognize him. The lofty scowl of judgment on the Gonfaloniere’s face does not falter as he turns and stares at the young Auditore through the crowd.

It is the Beelzebub himself watching, soulless and immortal.

_You could not help them. Now they burn for their sins. And so will you._

A demon grasps Ezio’s shoulder to pull him to hell. He seizes it and makes to strike. But the fiend has a voice, and it is that of someone he knows and trusts. _“Ezio, no! It’s me!”_

Shuddering and blinking, he struggles his way from darkness filled with death and screams.

Late afternoon light washes away the dream. He smells turpentine, musty paper, tiles warmed by the sun... wilting flowers. Somewhere people walk down a cobbled street. Swallows rap their wings against the eaves. Above him, Leonardo stares at him in horror, golden hair caught in his fist, pale face only inches away from the hidden blade.

Ezio jerks back his hands.

Leonardo staggers away and lands on the floor. For a moment he just remains sitting there and breathes hard, an inelegant sprawl of long legs. His mind too groggy to think, Ezio grabs the back of the bench and pulls himself up to lean against it. His muscles feel stiff and sore and he can’t remember why he’s in Leonardo’s room.

Then the painter takes a breath to calm himself, rises up to his knees, wipes hair from his face and smooths down his fine velvet coat. Dressed and combed as if to meet some important client, he looks more handsome than ever. Ezio himself feels ragged and dirty in comparison. He swings his legs on the floor and sits up, and rubs his face as though molding it back together.

At last his memory comes back to him. He remembers getting in through an open window sometime around noon. Knowing how busy Leonardo is, it did not come as a surprise to find the room empty, more so since he’d sent no word of his return to Firenze. Sitting on this bench beneath the windows, he’d listened to the sounds of traffic, to the swallows feeding their young. Uncle Mario had been driving him hard lately with sword-fight lessons, and after that, there was the journey, with little sleep caught on the road... the room was very warm, and peaceful... and his eyes felt so heavy.

Still shaken by the nightmare, he mumbles an apology. Is he apologising to Leonardo? Or for what happened in the dream? He betrayed his father, Federico, Petruccio.

“It is me who should apologise,” Leonardo says, visibly putting himself together. “You were not sleeping peacefully. It was a bad idea to wake you.”

Ezio shakes his head. “No, no.” _Do not forgive me so easily._

“You were crying their names. Your father and brothers. I thought —” Leonardo looks away. “Well. It does not matter what I thought.”

Ezio barely listens.

“Do you... do you think they must suffer for very long?” he blurts. “In purgatory?”

Leonardo, who has just started to get up, sits back down. He does not ask whom Ezio speaks of. “ _Madre di Dio,_ do not think of such things, _ragazzo._ ”

“Why? All men must go there. Except...” _Except saints, and those who go straight to hell._ Ezio digs his fingers into his sweat-crusted hair. He’s tired and hungry and his every muscle aches. “Leonardo, I could not help them.”

“What could you have done? Alberti’s men would have killed you.”

“But I — _”_ Ezio winces. He strikes one fist against the back of the bench, covers his eyes with the other. _God, I miss them._ He turns away, ashamed of his tears.

“Oh, _ragazzo_.” Leonardo pushes up, to sit beside him and put an arm around his shoulders. And it is Leonardo’s compassion that breaks him, leaving him wrecked with ugly, uncontrollable sobs.

After what feels like hours, Ezio finds himself leaning against the older man, nearly dozing off. He flinches, sees the fine velvet on Leonardo’s shoulder stained with tears and snot.

“I’m sorry! I ruined your coat.” His voice is gravelly with crying. God, he’s eighteen, a man grown, and acting such a child.

“It is just a coat.” Leonardo pulls a kerchief from his sleeve and offers it to Ezio, who wipes his face in it and looks away. He cannot bear to see this kind-hearted man looking at him so worried and thoughtful.

“Do you think I’m going to hell?” His voice nearly breaks at the last word.

“No. Why would you think so?”

“I’m a murderer. The scripture says —”

Leonardo grabs his shoulder. “Ezio, look at me.” After hesitating a little, he does. Leonardo’s eyes hold him, very serious. “Ezio, I do not think God is as simple, blind and cruel as some would have us believe. Even holy fathers are just men. They cannot know what the Creator thinks.”

Ezio blinks. “But there are sins even a king’s ransom’s worth of alms cannot atone —”

“Alms! Do you think that alms have ever done anything except make the clergy fatter? I do not believe in purgatory or hell. I think God has much more important things to do than nitpick our lives.”

It is blasphemy, yet Ezio wants to believe it. Very badly. “I’ve been to church in Monteriggioni, but I cannot go to the confessional. Not since...”

“Then don’t. It is God you should talk to, not puffed-up priests.”

Leonardo’s irreverence in the face of eternal damnation should horrify him, but instead, it ends up being strangely comforting. Despite having just cried himself hoarse, Ezio feels his throat tighten again. He nods. Leonardo puts a hand on his wrist, the one covered by the bracer he still rarely takes off.

“I built this, remember? I’m just as guilty as you are.”

 _No, you’re not. It’s not the blade that kills, it’s me._ But Ezio is far too grateful for Leonardo’s sympathy to accuse him of sophistry.

“ _Grazie,”_ he says. The artist shakes his head.

“Heavens. At your age, one should be thinking of girls and how to foil one’s teachers, not of hell.”

Ezio’s face grows warmer. “I do think of girls,” he says. “Quite a lot, in fact.”

“Well, that is good to hear.”

Ezio smiles back, and grabs the painter’s hand, which still lies on his bracer.

“ _Grazie._ I mean it. _Grazie, mio fratello_.”

The words escape his mouth before thinking. And Leonardo’s face hides so very little. Mortified, Ezio blushes, and pulls back. They’ve known one another for less than a year, and only met a few times before he left for Siena...

“I’m sorry. I was too forward.”

“No, no!” Leonardo presses a hand to his chest. “It is an honor. I would very much like to be you brother. Also, isn’t it good that you feel too much regret, rather than too little? We should never let ourselves grow cold to suffering and death. Now.” He stands up. “Are you hungry? I know I am. Let us go eat and have a drink in some horrid tavern where no one cares who we are. I want to hear everything that has happened after you left.”

Smiling again, Ezio pushes to his feet.

But somewhere in his heart he feels hollow. For Leonardo is giving his conscience far too much credit. When has he ever regretted any of his kills? It is a war that he wages, and his enemies deserve to die. He would gladly kill every one of them a second time to bring himself closer to revenge. He feels no remorse, and he has no regrets.

He is just afraid of hell.

**Author's Note:**

> (Many ficcers seem to think that Leonardo was an atheist. However, evidence doesn't support this, just that he likely wasn't very pious, and might have had some unorthodox views about God and religion. As for Ezio, I don't have any reason to think he would have been anything but a stout Catholic. As one, he would have believed in heaven and hell, as well as eternal damnation. How would someone whose live revolves around murder reconcile themself to the thought of perdition, or at least a very lengthy stay in the purgatory? It's basically these kind of thoughts that led to this little flashback.)


End file.
